Sunday marked the completion of an eleven-day process to make my own corned beef. I'd bought five and a half pounds of beef brisket from Costco, and ended up following Alton Brown's recipes almost to the letter, without any of the hitches I often run into with recipes that don't work quite like they should.

I started the brine back on Wednesday, Feb 17. Apart from having to buy juniper berries and ice (neither of which I regularly keep on hand), everything went nice and smoot, and the brine and the brisket went into a 2.5 gallon jumpo ziptop, taking up about half of the bottom shelf of my fridge. Apart from some first-day leakage and some adjustments to get as much air out of the bag as I could, this went fine. As recommended, I turned the brsiket over every day or so, but I had full coverage anyway, so it wasn't really an issue. The only change I made was to omit the saltpeter, which AB assured me would only affect the color and not the flavor. And that seems to be the case.

On Sunday afternoon, I started the cooking. My original plan was just to make the Corned Beef And Cabbage, with one minor substitution - red cabbage (what we had) for green. I knew this would do interesting things to the final coloration, but looks aren't everything, right? So I cut the brisket in half to make it fit in the pot, loaded everything up, then, about ten minutes later, noticed the And Cabbage recipe only called for 2.5 pounds of the brined brisket. OOPS.

Since I'd cut it in half, it was easy enough to pull half of it out before the water had gotten much past warm, but now I was somewhat committed. So I got out a second pot and prepped it for straight Corned Beef. Again, with one minor modification.

 I'd failed to remember to get the carrots and celery for the And Cabbage finale, and planned to go out and get some once the brisket was simmering away for two and a half hours. Only problem is, the regular corned beef wanted onion, celery, and carrot in the water the whole time, just as flavoring agents. So I ditched the carrot, doubled the celery (from the last of what I had on hand) and just went with it.

I'm not sure if the corned beef and cabbage is traditionally served with the broth, but the broth was so full of salty goodness that I don't care. Served it up with some hearty rosemary bread.

The regular corned beef just needed to have some of the goo removed from the top when it was done cooking - it would have been better if it'd been a more marbled brisket, but you work with what you get, and what I got ended up with most of the fat and connective tissue on top. That, apart from a bit of tasting, is sitting in my fridge awaiting further application.

Overall, while it's a LOT of time, it's actually not a lot of work, if you can spare the fridge space for a week and a half. About half an hour to an hour up front, and an afternoon a week and a half later, for some very nice results.